Club Legend

This trade reminds me of when the guy down the road is selling a 1999 Toyota Corolla for $300 and you think, well what could go wrong, I mean what would I have used the $300 on anyway, and i can always use it for parts. Let's hope it gets the roadworthy certificate soon so we can see what this baby can do, the take it off road and rev the hell out of it.

Id actually go as far as to say almost all injuries are preventable. A lot come across as bad luck because they can happen in an instant or seemingly get categorised as "impact" injuries, but the majority are a sudden exposure of long term poor loading or dysfunction.

Things like a broken ankle are a good example as its pretty nasty, but if your ankle was already stiff and tight its more likely to break than bend if you put it in a nasty situation.

Theres obviously an amount of impact that will forever exceed any tissues ability to cope, but if your diet sucks, your stressed all the time and your sleep is poor enough, your threshold might be far lower than it should.

Theres often more to almost every injury - concussion, broken ribs included - than initially expected but the underlying issues are often boring and essentially hidden until they arent.

Far too many issues have the appearance of bad luck when theres often something there potentially waiting to be exposed beforehand.

You just need the right perspective to be able to see it. As an individual it can be a little harder to establish what that is but if you see enough of them in a team environment like GWS, Adelaide and their Hammies, GC with their joint issues etc - then there's more likely to be a common thread thats more easily visible.

Any time you hear someone utter the phrase "its bad luck", theres a very high chance they havent taken a big enough step back yet to see it for what it is.

I think its always important to mention the above because it means you can do something about it. Otherwise it just implies theres nothing you can do, which isnt entirely the case.

Norm Smith Medallist

Id actually go as far as to say almost all injuries are preventable. A lot come across as bad luck because they can happen in an instant or seemingly get categorised as "impact" injuries, but the majority are a sudden exposure of long term poor loading or dysfunction.

Things like a broken ankle are a good example as its pretty nasty, but if your ankle was already stiff and tight its more likely to break than bend if you put it in a nasty situation.

Theres obviously an amount of impact that will forever exceed any tissues ability to cope, but if your diet sucks, your stressed all the time and your sleep is poor enough, your threshold might be far lower than it should.

Theres often more to almost every injury - concussion, broken ribs included - than initially expected but the underlying issues are often boring and essentially hidden until they arent.

Far too many issues have the appearance of bad luck when theres often something there potentially waiting to be exposed beforehand.

You just need the right perspective to be able to see it. As an individual it can be a little harder to establish what that is but if you see enough of them in a team environment like GWS, Adelaide and their Hammies, GC with their joint issues etc - then there's more likely to be a common thread thats more easily visible.

Any time you hear someone utter the phrase "its bad luck", theres a very high chance they havent taken a big enough step back yet to see it for what it is.

I think its always important to mention the above because it means you can do something about it. Otherwise it just implies theres nothing you can do, which isnt entirely the case.

Broken wrist/arm, broken leg, fractured cheekbone, sindesmosis ankles, dislocated shoulders, fracture scapula, ACL/PCL due to impact or sudden unnatural movement - none of those are preventable. The fittest most well prepared footballers would still be injured as a result of the above.

Maybe plantar fasciitis due poor foot strike/pronation or A/C sprain due to weak shoulder would fall into the category you’re referring to, but I can’t think of many others. I consider an Achilles to be akin to a calf injury myself.

Brownlow Medallist

Broken wrist/arm, broken leg, fractured cheekbone, sindesmosis ankles, dislocated shoulders, fracture scapula, ACL/PCL due to impact or sudden unnatural movement - none of those are preventable. The fittest most well prepared footballers would still be injured as a result of the above.

Maybe plantar fasciitis due poor foot strike/pronation or A/C sprain due to weak shoulder would fall into the category you’re referring to, but I can’t think of many others. I consider an Achilles to be akin to a calf injury myself.

I did an acl. After reading some of sven’s Analysis on natinui I realised I had the same issues and likely my acl was a result of my knee turning in under pressure which is preventable. That is what Sven is talking about.

Club Legend

I did an acl. After reading some of sven’s Analysis on natinui I realised I had the same issues and likely my acl was a result of my knee turning in under pressure which is preventable. That is what Sven is talking about.

Yep - possible, but the ACLs I referred to are ones where another player m knocks your knee or twists your body to an extent that your knee buckles, and there’s nothing you could do about it. Happens a fair bit unfortunately.

Club Legend

Broken wrist/arm, broken leg, fractured cheekbone, sindesmosis ankles, dislocated shoulders, fracture scapula, ACL/PCL due to impact or sudden unnatural movement - none of those are preventable. The fittest most well prepared footballers would still be injured as a result of the above.

Maybe plantar fasciitis due poor foot strike/pronation or A/C sprain due to weak shoulder would fall into the category you’re referring to, but I can’t think of many others. I consider an Achilles to be akin to a calf injury myself.

I appreciate where your coming from HF as it makes perfect sense on a lot of levels. Of course there are some things which arent preventable.

If you hit your thumb with a hammer hard enough itll break. If someone knees you hard enough in the cheekbone itll break. Thats fair enough. You most likely cant do much to prevent one-off blunt trauma. Im absolutely with you there.

But you'd be surprised at how much influence you can have on the rest.

A dislocated shoulder is regularly seen as a traumatic incident because it is. It implies bad luck because your shoulder felt "fine" right up until you copped a knock and then it got injured. But what gets lost is that although your shoulder felt "normal" before, it most likely wasnt. The incident is more likely to expose hidden dysfunction than create a brand new one. Again there is enough horrible trauma in the world (horrible car accident, fall from a great height etc) to tear any shoulder to shreads, but its not often seen on the footy field. If your daily posture sucks, your upper back is stiff, parts of your joint capsule get stiff and your rotator cuff weakens you've basically eaten away at your healthy buffer against low grade trauma. The incident just exposes something you didn't realise was there in the first place.

The knock or fall was bad luck sure, but a healthy shoulder shouldn't dislocate so easily.

The same goes for an ACL. The majority of ACLs are NOT traumatic. Most happen when landing from a jump or changing direction. Innocuous incidents that find a hole in already poor mechanics. Stiff ankles, tight hips, stiff backs etc are just a time bomb waiting for an AFL player to expose them. Even if your knee buckled as someone fell across it the better and more supple your mechanics are the more chance you are to make it out in tact.

People mistake "feeling normal" pre incident to "being normal" because things won't stand out unless you know what to look for. Its also a bit of a conundrum as why would you bother going looking for something that hasn't happened yet (and may never happen).

But if you see enough of the same injury you'll notice clear and concise patterns.

If you break a rib to a reasonably low grade force, there's every chance those ribs were stiffer to begin with thanks to poor posture etc. They didn't have enough give so they're a greater chance to break. Otherwise they shouldn't.

If you have a low threshold for concussion you might find your upper neck is stiff which sucks out some of the slack in the area that might help absorb the head trauma.

The same goes for a syndesmosis injury. When the ankle buckles, the stiffer it was beforehand the less likely you are to be able to buffer it compared to a supple one.

You can absolutely luck out and find yourself in a tricky situation, but the integrity and quality of your tissues and mechanics before hand will determine how unscathed you are. It just isnt obvious.

Thanks to modern living most of us (and elite athletes too btw) have stiffer hips, backs and ankles than we should. We sit a lot and we wear heeled shoes. We dont care enough about our postures and postions, we look down at phones for hours and then expect our tissues to tolerate the pummeling that comes with something like footy.

Its a long winded answer but bad luck is often just an answer that makes sense to someone yet to see the bigger picture. Respectfully of course.

To bring this back to Scully, clearly his incident was nasty, but considering his previous chronic knee issues, I wouldn't be surprised if his ankles were relatively stiff pre-syndesmosis.

The incident still could have surpassed his tissues ability to cope in a perfect world, but Id bet it wasnt a peferct world beforehand.

Brownlow Medallist

Thanks to modern living most of us (and elite athletes too btw) have stiffer hips, backs and ankles than we should. We sit a lot and we wear heeled shoes. We dont care enough about our postures and postions, we look down at phones for hours and then expect our tissues to tolerate the pummeling that comes with something like footy.